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Exercises and Addresses at the Cele- 
bration of the 300th Anniversary of 
the First Law Making Body on the 
Western Hemisphere which con- 
vened at Jamestown July 30, 1619 



JLO^X^>L^ 



HOUSE OF DELEGATES, RICHMOND 
AUGUST 15, 1919 



JAMESTOWN 
1619-1699 



WILLIAMSBURG 

1699-1780 



RICHMOND 

1780-1919 



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ORDER OF 
EXERCISES AND ADDRESSES 



AT THE 



Celebration of the 300th Anniversary of the 

First Law Making Body on the 

Western Hemisphere 



WHICxH CONVENED AT JAMESTOWN 
JULY 30. 1619 



HOUSE OF DELEGATES, RICHMOND. 
August 15. 1919 



JAMESTOWN WILLIAMSBURG RICHMOND 

1619—1699 1699—1780 1780—1919 



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ORDER OF EXERCISES 



Senate and House of Delegates Convene at 11 A. M. 
Joint Assembly Convenes at 11:15 A. M. 

Joint Assembly receives — (a) Governor of Virginia. 

(b) Dr. Thomas Nelson Page. 

(c) Other Distinguished Guests. 

Invocation Rev. E. Ruffin Jones 

Rector of Bruton Parish 

Presentation of Dr. John Leslie Hall Hon. Norvell L. Henley 

of the House of Delegates 

Address Dr. John Leslie Hall 

College of William and Mary 

Presentation of the Governor of Virginia Hon. Harry R. Houston 

Speaker of the House of Delegates 

Address His Excellency, Westmoreland Davis 

Governor of Virginia 

Presentation of Dr. Thos. Nelson Page Hon. B. F. Buchanan 

President of the Senate 

Address Dr. Thos. Nelson Page 

of Virginia 

Benediction Rev. E. Ruffin Jones 

Reception by the Governor of Virginia to the General Assembly — 9 P. M 



COMMISSION 



GOVERNOR WESTMORELAND DAVIS, Chairman. 

W. W. BAKER, or CHESTERriELD. 

JULIEN GUNN, from the Senate. 

NORVELL L. HENLEY, from House of Delegates. 



INVOCATION 

Rev. E. Ruffin Jones. 

Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another. 
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world 
were made, from everlasting to everlasting, thou, art God, even our God. 
Our fathers trusted in thee, and thou didst deliver them, yea, thou didst 
hear them what time they called upon thee. Thou didst show them the 
light of thy countenance and reveal to them the way in which they should 
walk, and thou givest them to know thy truth and to recognize thy hand 
in the affairs of men, and under thee to order their going in the way. 

At this time our hearts rise in gratitude to thee as we remember how 
they assembled in thy name, in thy presence, and in thy house, and inspired 
by thee did recognize the divine birthright of man as the child of God — 
human dignity, private worth, individual responsibility, political equality — 
in the right of the people to govern themselves in thy sight ; that thou didst 
give them the vision, and the wisdom, and the will to establish representa- 
tive government upon the sacred soil of New America. 

And upon this foundation thou hast built our nation and hast pros- 
pered our people. Still give us grace that we may look unto the rock 
whence we were hewn and to the hole of the pit whence we were digged. 
Make us true to the best traditions of the past. Keep our liberties in- 
violate, preserve the representative character of our government, and "for 
as much as men's affairs do little prosper when God's service is neglected," 
grant that the chosen delegates of thy people may in thy name continue to 
make laws, preserve peace, redress wrong, maintain right, and establish in 
every way, as much as in them lieih, that righteousness which exalteth a 
nation. 

Especially do we invoke thy presence this morning. Make us deeply 
sensible of the occasion. Bring home to us its rich lessons, its solemn 
memories, and inspire us with its sacred traditions and bring us to nobler 
purpose and more exalted effort in thy name and for thy people. All 
which we ask in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and for the coming 
of His kingdom. Amen. 



PRESENTATION OF DR. HALL 

Hon. Norvell L. Henley. 

Mr. Speaker, Fellow Members of the General Assembly of Virginia, 
Ladies and Gentlemen : 

We are here for the purpose of celebrating the 300th anniversary of 
the meeting of this body on July 30, 1619, which was the first legislative 
body assembled on the Western Hemisphere. 

Perhaps one of the most important, certainly one of the most lasting, 
things done by this body, almost in its infancy, was the act passed on 
October 10, 1693, providing for the erection of the College of William 
and Mz-xy in Virginia, at Middle Plantation, later called Williamsburg. 

This venerable institution, thus erected and established, has stood the 
test of time, and is still an important factor in the educational interests of 
this Commonwealth. 

We are, indeed, fortunate in having with us on this occasion a dis- 
tinguished citizen and scholar, who has won for himself fame and reputa- 
tion, not only in this Commonwealth, but throughout the length and 
breadth of our country, and one who has given more than thirty years of 
his time and talent to the institution that he loves so well. 

It, therefore, Mr. Chairman, affords me great pleasure to present to 
you Dr. John Leslie Hall, professor of English at the College of William 
and Mary, who has selected as his subject, "The Meeting Place of the 
First Virginia Assembly," and who will now address you. 



THE MEETING PLACE OF THE FIRST 
VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY 

Dr. John Leslie Hall. 

Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen of the General Assembly, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

The Colonial Dames, in their celebration of July 30, had the date of 
the First General Assembly. The Association for the Preservation of 
Virginia Antiquities on August 1st, at Jamestown, had the place. Your 
honorable body on this present occasion has the very presence of the 
Grand Assembly and of His Excellency, the Governor. All are felicitous 
occasions. The three together should prove to all reasonable minds that 
Virginia had the first permanent English settlement on this continent and 
the first law-making body that ever met on American soil. It may, how- 
ever, take us several hundred years longer to win recognition in some 
other sections of our awn country; for it is only a few days since one of 
our greatest Northern journals suggested, in an editorial, that King George 
might be persuaded to come as our national guest next year "when we 
celebrate the tercentenary of British settlement in America." A complete 
ignoring of Jamestown and 1607 ! 

Massachusetts will bring all the world to Plymouth Rock in 1920. 
By that time, she may have heard some rumors of John Smith, Pocahontas, 
and 1607, and of our celebrations of 1619. All Virginians owe a debt of 
gratitude to the Colonial Dames, the Association for the Preservation of 
Virginia Antiquities, and the General Assembly of 1918, for celebrating 
the tercentenary of tlie First General Assembly of Virginia. This First 
American Congress met before "the Pilgrim Fathers" had sailed from 
Southampton, England, and the colonization of America by Englishmen 
was made at Jamestown thirteen years before Plymouth Rock was dis- 
covered and a year before Brewster and other fathers of New England 
went from England to Holland. If time permitted, we could prove from 
ancient records that "advancing the gospel in those remote parts of the 
world" was only one of several motives that led the New England colonists 
to migrate from Holland to America. 

I am vain enough of my home to believe that I represent here today 
the most famous portion of our famous Commonwealth. I speak today for 
"The Cradle of the Republic"; the shrines of Jamestown; the tomb of 
Robert Hunt, "the true apostle of Virginia"; the tomb of Sir George 
Yeardley, who brought with him the Magna Charta of Virginia; the altar 
at which the Princess Pocahontas pledged her faith to John Rolfe, the 
Englishman; the church in which met the First Law-Making Body of 
America; the parapets of Yorktown and the place where Cornwallis sur- 
rendered his sword to Washington; the spot where the thundering tones of 
Henry cried, "Caesar had his Brutus"; the ancient college which gave 
us the Declaration of Independence and the Monroe Doctrine, and whose 
law professor trained John Marshall to interpret the Constitution. To 
some extent, also, I represent that noble band of women who are laboring 



8 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

so indefatigably to preserve and to mark the antiquities of Virginia. 
Especially do I represent that immortal building in which the First Vir- 
ginia Assembly met in 1619, and in six days enacted laws for a nation 
destined to teach England how to treat her colonies as children and to 
strike the decisive blow against the autocracy of the House of Hohenzollern. 
Yes, this little church is uppermost in my thoughts, my fellow citizens. It 
is our most precious building. It is our Acropolis, our Forum, and our 
Temple of Diana. It is our great Temple of Faith and our Temple of 
Justice. Will you ever again let it crumble into ruins? Shall it ever 
again become the habitation of the bat and the owl? Or will you Vir- 
ginians preserve it as a sacred shrine for your unborn generations? 

Your first meeting, gentlemen of the General Assembly, was held in 
the third church building. It was the first building on the present site of 
the Jamestown church. It was a wooden structure, "SO by 20 foote," as 
the old record puts it. The Colonial Records of Virginia, published by 
authority of your own Senate of 1874, declares in the clearest language 
that the Assembly of 1619 was held in this old church, but only historians 
now consult its musty pages. May I suggest that you take immediate 
steps to fill the press, the libraries of the country, with propaganda litera- 
ture, reminding all of our sister commonwealths that Virginia, the eldest 
of the colonies, had become a permanent English settlement before Robin- 
son, Brewster, and Bradford, had thought seriously of migrating to the 
New World, and had drafted a code of laws more democratic than Hamp- 
den ever dreamed of, before the ISIayflower had turned her prow towards 
the continent of America? 

It is an interesting fact that churches are famous in American history. 
The Old South Church in Boston dates from 1669, becoming famous 
about 1775; St. John's, Richmond, became famous in 1775; while the 
fame of the Jamestown churches dates from 1607 and 1619. 

It was most fitting that the First Virginia Assembly should meet in 
the church; for, as we are told by one of our best historians, "among the 
first enactments of the legislature were those which concerned the church.'' 
They had the cause of religion in their minds. Their instructions, as I 
shall show you, were to fear God and spread His kingdom in the New 
World. Take this spot under your loving care forever. There met the 
first parliament of America. There your pious forefathers unrolled the 
Magna Charta of Virginia, while invoking the blessing of Divine Provi- 
dence. If New England cherishes her Old South Church, shall we neglect 
our Jamestown church, the cradle of American legislation? It is now 
silent and deserted. No more does it re-echo the voice of the priest or of 
the statesman; only the dead are there; but James Blair speaks only from 
the tomb; Yeardley delivers no messages to the Grand Assembly. W'hen 
great highways bring untold thousands of pilgrims to the sacred shrines 
of Virginia, shall they find our noble Marys and Marthas, the dear women 
of Virginia, standing by the tottering walls of the First Temple of America 
begging a pittance from the sneering Diveses of other sections? W^hen 
Jamestown Island is turned into a national park, shall the old church bell 
hang silent in its tower? 

But some Puritan critic will say, "Why did your Virginia Assembly 



k 




B. F. Buchanan 

President of the Senate 




Harry R. Houston 

Speaker of the House of Delegates 



300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 9 

meet in a church? Certainly they were not men of piety. We had all the 
Christians in our country; the colonists of Virginia were mere butterflies 
of aristocracy." So say many of the histories. So says our own historian, 
warped by his Puritan sympathies. Let history answer. The Virginians 
were not all aristocrats; the New Englanders not all vestal virgins of 
holiness. As men of the same English stock, they both inherited the 
Anglo-Saxon tenacity for freedom, and the same Anglo-Saxon reverence 
for religion. "To worship God as I please" has been the battle-cry of 
Englishmen for untold generations. With the English race, freedom and 
religion are inseparably connected. All freedom with us is religious free- 




The Capitol at Williamsburg As It Appeared About 1S30. 

From a painting owned by Mrs. Anne Mxinford, of Richmond, Va. 

Reproduced from "Williamsburg, The Old Colonial Capital" by permission of the 

author, Lyon G. Tyler. 

dom. With some races, religion means servitude; but with us Americans 
it means liberty. We look with horror upon those brief periods in our 
English past when men were persecuted for their religious opinions; to 
escape this persecution, our forefathers came to Jamestown and to 
Plymouth. With us Virginians, religion and government have always 
gone hand in hand. In our mother country, too, the church is but the 
state in its religious aspect. So in days of old. Moses was both the great- 
est lawgiver and the greatest religious legislator of the Old World; Jesus, 
of the new. If men would keep the second half of the decalogue, we 
might close our courts and turn our jails into factories. "Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself," as enunciated by Jesus, is the divine slogan of 
democracy. Jesus was a democrat two thousand years ahead of His time; 
therefore the Jews crucified Him as an anarchist. True democracy is but 
religion translated into action; love is the truest democracy. "Love work- 
eth no ill to his neighbor." We need no laws to make us care for wife and 
children. 



10 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

This religion, our Virginia forefathers always respected and many of 
them practiced it. Many of the histories teach us otherwise. They repre- 
sent the settlers of New England as all holy elders looking for a prayer- 
meeting, and the colonists of Virginia as fox-hunting squires, ready for a 
julep. The phrase, "Pilgrim Fathers," with its magic ring, its psychologi- 
cal fascination, has become standard; while we have tamely accepted for 
our fathers the colorless phrase, "Virginia colonists." This gives New 
England a great advantage. "A good name is better than great riches" is 
true in more senses than one. Juliet tells Romeo that a rose by any other 
name would smell as sweet; but she was talking poetry. Lord Bacon, 
"the wisest of mankind," says in prose, "Words exercise a reciprocal and 
reactionary power over our intellect." So the title "Pilgrim Fathers" has 
captured the imagination of all Americans. "Pilgrim" has a solemn, a 
religious connotation. It calls up reminiscences of literature; we think of 
the pilgrim, 

"With naked foot and sackcloth vest, 
And arms enfolded on his breast," 

seeking sacred shrines for purposes of devotion. Again we think of one 
or more of the sublimest passages in the English Bible. "Father," too, 
is redolent of holiness. It calls up sweet memories of home; reminds us 
of a classic scene in English literature, how "the priest-like father reads 
the sacred page"; reminds the devout churchman of the church fathers; 
and to many pious souls calls up the Holy Father, to them the vice-regent 
of Heaven. But "colonists!" What sweet memories cluster around that 
word? What sacred associations gather about that term? It has neither 
poetry nor piety to help it. Any man with an axe and a hammer can be a 
colonist. In Virginia history it smacks of oaths at so much a dozen for 
penalty. The New England genius for invention did not stop with the 
cotton gin; it invents phrases which make history and tune the poet's harp. 

In spite of their name, the founders of Virginia were religious men; 
they should be called the patriarchs of the New World. The first words 
of King James I. to the London Company; the voice of the pious Hakluyt; 
the earliest acts of our Assembly — all prove that our pioneers in England 
and in Virginia were anxious to spread the Christian religion. For in- 
stance, King James, in his instructions to the London Company, says: 
"That the said presidents, councils, and the ministers, should provide that 
the true word and service of God be preached, planted, and used, not only 
in the said colonies, but also as much as might be among the savages bor- 
dering upon them." In the instructions of the company to the first sup- 
ply of colonists in December, 1606, after the advice as to site and other 
material matters, we read: "Lastly, and chiefly, the w^y to prosper and 
achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of 
your country and your own, and to serve and fear God, the Giver of all 
goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath not planted 
shall be rooted out." Those instructions were probably written by the 
Reverend Richard Hakluyt, who came near being the first Anglican mis- 



300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 11 

sionary to the New World. Again: Michael Drayton, the poet, in "A 
Poet's Farewell Blessing," to the emigrants of 1606, says: 

"In kenning of the shore 
(Thanks to God first given) 
O you, the happiest men, 
Be frolic then," etc. 

Sunday morning, May 14, 1607, the Reverend Robert Hunt adminis- 
tered the Lord's Supper to the colonists. At the same rail, under the 
trees, knelt Smith and Wingfield, who had been reconciled by the pious 
Hunt. This event is commemorated annually by the present rector of 
Bruton parish. 

Lord Bacon, in 1609, when the second charter was granted, wrote: 
"Above all, let men make that Profit of being in the Wildernesse, as they 
have God alwaies, and His Service, before their eyes." This is found in 
his essay on Plantations. 

June 8, 1610, Lord Delaware, the high priest of Virginia, "falling 
upon his knees on the shore, lifted his hands in prayer, thanking God that 
he had come in time to save Virginia." * * * "He then rose and went 
to the church, where service was held and a sermon preached." 

On the 30th of July, 1619, when the First Assembly met, "All the 
Burgesses tooke their places in the quire till a prayer was said by Mr. 
Bucke, the minister, that it would please God to guide and sanctifie all 
our proceedings to His Owne glory and the good of this Plantation." 
Among the first acts passed were laws against idleness, drunkenness and 
gambling; and measures were taken to educate some Indian children "in 
true religion." 

We are told in a good book that a tree is known by its fruits. In 
1622, the Christian religion as set forth in the teaching and in the lives 
of Hunt, Bucke, Whitaker, and other early fathers of the Virginia church, 
saved the colony from total extinction. Chanco, the saviour of the colony, 
was an Indian convert. Purchas, in his Pilgrimes, says: "Such was (God 
be thanked for it) the good fruit of an infidel converted to Christianity." 
Few see this rare old book; the two best known modern histories of Vir- 
ginia do not mention Chanco. A modest tablet in the Jamestown church 
perpetuates his memory. His name should be coupled with that of Poca- 
hontas in the catalogue of Virginia's worthies. 

Devotees of Virginia church history will be interested to know that 
the first regular convention of the Virginia clergy was held in the James- 
town church in 1690. The Reverend James Blair presided. This con- 
vention digested the scheme of a college to train ministers. In three years 
James Blair opened the College of William and Mary. His ashes rest in 
the Jamestown churchyard. 

Such are the facts about the old church at Jamestown. It is our 
Temple of Learning, our Temple of Justice, and our Temple of Faith. 
Who does not love it? Who will not do all in his power to help those 
noble women who are now guarding its sacred precincts? If we prove 
recreant, the very stones will cry out against us. 

About 1750, services were discontinued at Jamestown. By 1800 the 
old building fell into ruins, leaving only the ivy-mantled tower. For more 



12 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

than a hundred years, the mother church of English America could offer 
no shelter to the way-worn pilgrim; only the dead could find rest. In 
1907 the Colonial Dames restored the building. Shall it in turn be 
chipped by the vandal and the monuments of your fathers be carried off by 
travelers? Shall we hear no more the reverberating peals of holy bells 
calling us to prayer and worship? 

Gentlemen of the Grand Assembly, and Your Excellency, on the 19th 
of September, 1676, Mr. Bacon set fire to our church. I need not tell you 
that he thought he was doing a service to the cause of Virginia. He said 
that William Berkeley should never again enter that sacred building. You 
know Mr. Bacon used very strong language, stronger than might bear 
repetition in this presence. Our fathers almost impoverished themselves 
to rebuild the church so dear to them. We children of Yeardley, of 
Pocahontas, and of other members of Master Hunt's and Master Bucke's 
congregations wish to relight the golden candlesticks of those apostles of 
Virginia. We need your sympathy and your assistance. We long to hear 
the songs of praise and thanksgiving, the penitential prayers and psalms 
as read by the holy Hunt and others, resound through those sacred pre- 
cincts. We long for the sound of the bells that called our fathers to prayer 
and meditation. We believe that thousands of devout men and women 
would thrill with rapture if they could hear those holy bells pealing again 
from our venerable tower. 

Let them roll, roll, roll. 
Holy bells. 
What a world of solemn thought their melody compels, 
While our hearts are keeping time 
In palpitating rhyme 
To the throbbing of the bells, 
Of .the bells, bells, bells. 
To the rolling and the tolling of the bells, 
As they pour from out their golden throats 
The story of the days of old when God's abounding grace 
Was poured upon that holy spot and filled that holy place. 

The women were first at the tomb of their Master. The men were 
slow to believe and slower of action. Is it so with us in our generation? 
Have we left our dear women to stand lone sentinels at the tomb of the 
prophets? Here they are today, the guardians of our shrines and meccas. 
They have reared monuments to the heroes of their girlhood. They have 
sent their sons to the front of the battle. Now they are standing, "like 
Niobe, all tears," watching our crumbling fanes and temples. Shall we 
make them beggars? Must they hold up supplicating hands to ignorant 
parvenus for farthings and pennies? Or will our mother State, in this 
new era of her prosperty, say, lovingly, to them, "Daughters of Virginia, 
why weep ye? Go in peace"? Burgesses of Virginia, I know your 
answer. 



PRESENTATION OF THE GOVERNOR 

Hon. Harry R. Houston. 

Governor Davis, Members of the Joint Assembly of Virginia, 
Our Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Among all men there are days set apart to perpetuate the memory of 
great events. 

The most barbarous and uncultivated hold in the devoutest reverence 
the glorious memories of the past and love to pay the homage of their 
adoration at the shrine of departed heroes. 

To a reflecting mind, however, there could be no day more justly 
celebrated than this which we are now convened to honor. 

We look upon those American patriots, who have just been described 
with such grace and eloquence, as not only possessed of those qualities 
which distinguish other heroes, not only as warriors and statesmen, but 
combining with these great virtues a true wisdom and nobleness of mind 
which dignify and exalt them far above the followers of Caesar and 
Napoleon. 

More than this: we honor them as the ones to whom we owe the 
benefits of a free government, who not only defended their country's rights 
by the valor of their arms, but to whose wisdom, counsel and example as 
the directors of its infancy we are indebted for the peace and prosperity 
we have ever enjoyed. 

Surely there were never heroes like these! They were the creators of 
a nation. They first proved to mankind the capacity of man for self- 
government and are thus destined to be recognized as the reformers of the 
world! Today their spirits move in Europe and encourage the afflicted, 
impoverished and broken-hearted people of all those war-torn lands to 
stand forever against autocracy and tyranny and amid the thunders of 
this passing storm, the cry "Liberty" is heard hopefully while its aspirants 
look for sympathy and example to the land of the American patriots, the 
members of the first House of Burgesses of Virginia, where was first heard 
the voice of real freedom. 

If, with the lamp of history, we look down the vista of the past and 
call in review the long line of patriots of tliis old Commonwealth, there is 
perhaps no particular class who have played a more acceptable and con- 
spicuous part in the development of their State and country than those who 
have presided over the destinies of Virginia in the executive chair. 

Beginning with him, whose impassioned cry, "Give me Liberty," rang 
around the world and fired the souls of his fellow countrymen to the de- 
fense of their rights, including also him who was the founder of public 
education in Virginia and high upon the Acropolis of human rights builded 
the citadel of Virginia liberties, and many others of splendid courage and 
ability down to their worthy successors in the memory of our own times, we 
have found among the chief executives of the Commonwealth of Virginia 
the ablest, the truest and the bravest of her sons. 



14 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

It is my pleasure at this Three Hundredth Anniversay of the founding 
of the House of Burgesses, to introduce to you one of this distinguished 
line, who lives up to the best traditions of the Old Dominion and who 
exemplifies the highest ideals of our beloved State. 

Gentlemen of the Joint Assembly and our guests, I have the honor of 
presenting to you at this time that distinguished son of Loudoun, His 
Excellency, the Honorable Westmoreland Davis, Governor of Virginia. 



yj 




Westmoreland Davis 

Governor of Virginia 



ADDRESS OF GOV. WESTMORELAND DAVIS 

Mr. Speaker, Gentlemen of the General Assembly, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I had not expected to have made an address today, although I appear 
upon the programme, because I had felt that I had only too recently ad- 
dressed the General Assembly at length and that we had provided ourselves 
with a distinguished son of Virginia — an historian, a diplomat — who 
would speak to us of the lessons to be drawn from the meeting of that 
assembly at Jamestown which has grown famous throughout the world. 

As Governor of Virginia, I always feel a spirit of pride and exultation 
when the great deeds of those who have gone before us are accounted, and 
I always love to join in the song of praise for those who have made possible 
in this country the great liberty which we enjoy. We frequently hear the 
causes of the Great War given. We are told that it was the sinking of the 
Lusitania. We are told that infractions of certain rights of ours required 
that we should punish the German government. But to my mind that con- 
flict was inevitable from the time when the sturdy barons of England 
wrested from King John the Magna Charta; from the time when kings 
were forced to recognize that representation was necessary to taxation; 
from the time when that little assembly at Jamestown, receiving its com- 
mission from Yeardley, was advised that in the future it would have to do 
with its own affairs, there was a spirit of liberty and of progress through- 
out the land growing and thriving until at the end of all these years, in 
response to the call of humanity abroad and in aid of the salvation of the 
world, millions of our young men, whose breasts were filled with courage 
and of patriotism unsullied with lust of power, crossed the sea in the 
great battle that was inevitably to come in the world between autocracy 
and democracy. And that battle has come and has been won and I am 
not going to talk to you about those stories of valour of our soldiers and 
accomplishments by our statesmen that are now household words. 

In that assembly, that little assembly in the church, with a few mem- 
bers of the Government there the thought of progress was dominant. They 
dreamed of universities; they talked of vital statistics and of the census; 
they looked to self-government for the future. 

I am proud of Virginia and of her traditions, but I am proud of 
them only as they find expression in the future of equal accomplishmeni 
by our own people. I glory in the memories which stand for the past, 
but I look to the time when in the future the members of this General 
Assembly, aided by my humble efforts, will have accomplished for man- 
kind and for our people something that may not be commemorated in 
stone or in brass, but will find its expression in the feeling and affection of 
a people for whom we have striven. 

I am not going to keep you. I am going to tell you, however, that as 
you come here in this General Assembly, imbued, I say, with the spirit of 
Yeardley and the Burgesses who have gone before us, that Vv^e should re- 
member that we are called in the spirit of co-operation and sympathy to 
build up this old Commonwealth. 



16 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

I wish the members of the General Assembly to feel that I am anx- 
ious always to co-operate with them; that while I think for myself I do 
not insist upon thinking for them. I hope that we may henceforth be 
inspired by the spirit of this meeting and take it to our people. 

Moved by the purpose of the gathering at Jamestown that we com- 
memorate, we must improve all of our schools, especially the rural schools, 
and help the teachers of Virginia; we must build roads and improve 
rural conditions. Our spirit must be one of achievement, building the 
spiritual man upon the bettered material man. If we would maintain our 
institutions we must educate our people to understand and appreciate what 
these institutions mean to us and we must improve their environment, 
giving practical illustration of what our government means to our peo- 
ple. These truths are fundamental. Our people must feel that there is 
one law in the land and that the strong as well as the weak must obey. 
At this time when our people are in distress because the prices of the 
necessities of life are fast passing beyond the power of those not blessed 
with riches to possess them, we must be brave enough to legislate for the 
protection of the weak that they be not preyed upon by the strong. 

Something has been said here of the pretentions of New England in 
the matter of the early settlement of this country. I have no quarrel with 
her. My chief concern is not who landed here first, but who has best 
used the opportunities that God has given a free people in a free country. 
Having drunk at the fountain of liberty, and with the inspiration of the 
ideals of Yeardley, it becomes interesting only to know how we, as com- 
pared with New England, have executed the trusts that these people 
three hundred years ago, coming with the message of liberty, have brought 
to us. 

Just one word. I am deeply sensible of the honor that has come to 
me as Governor of this great Commonwealth. I am impressed beyond 
measure with its history, its traditions, and the character of the great 
men who made her name illustrious, and it is my purpose in my humble 
way, as best I may, to emulate their example, for one thought has actuated 
from the beginning her distinguished sons and her people, and 'that has 
been with loyal and true hearts, as devoted Virginians, to preserve sacred 
the honor and to secure the progress of this great Commonwealth. May 
this thought always possess us! 



PRESENTATION OF DR. THOMAS 
NELSON PAGE 

Hon. B. F. Buchanan. 

Governor Davis, Members of the Committee, Members of the 

General Assembly of Virginia, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

It is indeed a privilege to attend this historic meeting in memorial 
celebration of the birth of democracy and of local self-government in 
America. 

Our minds naturally revert to the year of 1606 when a band of 
Englishmen, inspired by the spirit of adventure and new enterprise, were 
embarking to found a colony in the New World. They were greeted by 
Drayton, the poet of the day, wishing them bon voyage, 

"To find the pearl and the gold 

In ours to hold 

Virginia — 

Earth's only paradise." 

In the language of a distinguished Virginian referring to this old 
poem, "There may be other paradises today, but to those who know 
Virginia and live in her and love her she is still a paradise with which 
no other can compare." 

This was soon after the death of Elizabeth, the virgin queen, for 
whom Virginia was named, and was England's great age. Her mighty sea 
lords were establishing her supremacy on the waters. Her great chancellors 
were building up and perfecting the stately structure of the English Com- 
mon Law. Her gallant Raleigh was dreaming of a western em,pire. 
Bacon was announcing his new and wonderful philosophy of human life, 
and there was Shakespeare "with his genius for expression, his wealth 
of allusion, his soul-stirring pathos, his boundless humor, his mastery 
over every one of the human passions, all welded together in the world's 
most consummate art creation." 

It was in such an age and by such a people that the colony of Vir- 
ginia was planted and fostered. 

On the 30th of July, 1619, more than a year before the landing of 
the Pilgrims, twenty-two delegates, elected by the eleven plantations of 
Virginia, met in Jamestown for the enactment of laws for the govern- 
ment of the colony. This was the first representative assembly held in 
America, and even Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts indorses 
the statement of Bancroft, the historian, that "Virginia thus became the 
nursery of the freemen in the very beginning of colonization." 

In this assembly was planted the seed which germinated and which 
with tender, loving hands was watered and cultivated until it grew into 
the mighty tree of this republic, a tree whose widespreading branches 
furnishes the only shelter for the weltering war-worn peoples of the 
world and whose leaves are indeed the healing of the nations. 



1 8 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

From the date of this assembly 300 years ago Virginia has main- 
tained in some form a representative government and has always as- 
serted the right of the people to rule. She has not only asserted this 
right, but her sons have been willing to fight and to die for it. It is 
and has ever been with her a passion. It is the spirit of Virginia, and 
by reason of this spirit she has been called upon to assume leadership 
in every great epochal event in this country's history. 

In 1776, her Washington led the patriot band to victory and estab- 
lished this republic. In 1812 her Madison was commander in chief of the 
Army and Navy that established the right of America to the freedom of 
the seas. In 1845 her Scott and Taylor dictated the terms of a victorious 
peace in the halls of the Montezumas. In 1861-65 her sainted Jackson 
and immortal Lee led as patriotic a band of soldiery as ever bared its 
breast in defense of a principle, a soldiery that fought with a valor un- 
surpassed in the world's history and with a courage and devotion which 
would have been impossible if they had not believed their cause just. 
It was a lost cause, it is true, but a cause for which no head has ever 
bowed in shame. In 1917-18 it was the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, 
Virginia bom and Virginia educated, that rescued a frenzied war-mad- 
dened world from anarchy and choas and preserved her liberties. 

This proud heritage, Virginia, is ours, ours to hold and ours to cher- 
ish. No other Commonwealth can claim it and it is the offspring of 
the event which we celebrate today. It is an event worthy of our com- 
memoration and its story should be told by one well fitted for the pur- 
pose. It has been made my pleasant duty to present to you such a man, 
a Virginian bred in the bone, distinguished as author, diplomat and 
historian, qualified by birth and inheritance, by education and train- 
ing, and more than all by a loving and filial devotion, to speak for his 
mother State, of her traditions, her achievments and her magnificent 
history. 

I take pleasure in presenting, for he needs no introduction to a Vir- 
ginia audience, Ambassador Thomas Nelson Page, who will make the 
principal address of the day. 



o 




Nelson Page 



ADDRESS OF DR. THOMAS NELSON PAGE 

In the presence of this Assembly one may well feel that it is good 
to be a Virginian. And as we look back along the track, now shining, 
now obscure, which marks the progress of civilization from the great oc- 
casion whose three hundredth aniversary we are now celebrating in this 
honored and historic Capitol, the hearts of all of Virginia's sons must 
swell with pride to reflect how much Virginia has contributed thereto. 

Events, however important they may appear in passing, lack the 
perspective requisite to give them their true relation to other events. It 
is only where the march of history has stretched sufficiently to give us 
a wide horizon that we can judge their just relation to its complete 
progress. There has been enough in the twelve years experience of the 
Virginia Colony, with its trials and its errors; its heroic sacrifices; its 
failures and its providential deliverances, to convey some idea to those 
few deputies of the Virginia Colonists, summoned to Jamestown by 
Governor Yeardley in 1619, of the importance of that assembly of Vir- 
ginian representatives. But their view must have been limited^ indeed, 
beside ours who know the whole course which stretched from that first 
assembly of representatives in the western world, on through three hun- 
dred years of struggle for liberty, down to the time when their descend- 
ants on the historic battle-fields of Europe but a year ago bared their 
breasts as the final barrier against the steadily advancing forces of the 
Imperial Tyranny that strove to destroy human liberty forever. 

We, who know something of the history of Virginia, can now judge 
in what measure the Old Dominion has contributed in this long strug- 
gle to the ultimate victory which we trust is to establish finally the fruits 
of the efforts and the sacrifices which have won it at so precious a price. 

Unhappily for us, the Virginians were given to contenting themselves 
with high performance, without troubling themselves to see that their 
history was transmitted either to the contemporary outside world or to 
posterity. "It was a grievous fault." It was simply throwing away the 
title-deeds to our birthright. Self satisfied — too well satisfied — we 
wrapped ourselves in our reserve and refused to appeal in any way to the 
outside world. But the outer world is the judge when it comes to standing 
at the bar of history. And its public opinion is the atmosphere in which 
light grows luminous. 

The summer home from which I have come at your gracious in- 
vitation is on a coast which in old maps was laid down as "Northern 
Virginia." It looks across a few miles of blue water on a line of small 
islands which were named "Smith's Islands" and which bear a monument, 
visible on clear days, erected to John Smith, the same doughty captain 
who was ere while the renowned Governor of Virginia, and whose great 
work still survives in the hearts of the people of this ancient Common- 
wealth — Mother of States and of statesmen. If, with swelling heart, I 
shall speak on this occasion of that old Virginia, or of that larger Vir- 
ginia, whose first charters guaranteed to her the privileges and rights of 
freeborn Englishmen; whose confines stretched "to the farthest seas;" of 
that greater Virginia whose sons, ever enlarging her charters, gave her 



20 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

spirit to the American Republic, as its most precious heritage, and have 
but now spoken to the democracies of the world through the battle cry of 
the American armies, I trust you will believe that I am not unmindful 
of this present and ancient Commonwealth, which is the heart and soul 
of it all and which, I have, as her devoted son, come to celebrate with 
you here today on this honored and sacred spot. 

Small and insignificant as it may have appeared at the time and even 
later to the outside world, that little Assembly of Burgesses, as they were 
termed, gathered together from the western frontier of the world, with 
what destiny of liberty for humanity was it fraught? Who could have 
then foretold what its influence would be on the future progress of civili- 
zation, in Virginia, in the New World, in the Old World, throughout 
the World! Liberty took a step forward that day unsurpassed in any 
single day of the histor}' of progress. Jealous of every right conceded to 
them in the charters granted to the first lord and Governor, the settlers 
in Virginia had already in 1612, while that lord and first Governor was 
a prisoner in the Tower of London, petitioned for and as far as they 
might, demanded enlarged rights and more secure guaranties from their 
rulers in the mother country. And now their new Governor and old 
friend, Sir George Yeardley, had brought them a guaranty for greater than 
either he or they knew, the right to meet in General Assembly through their 
representatives and legislate for themselves, the right to levy taxes on 
themselves and be free from all others, the inestimable concession of the 
right of self-government. Like the Genii's gift of the Arabian tale, it 
was a tent so small that it might be compressed and concealed in the palm 
of the hand, but it might be expanded to cover an army. No wonder the 
Spanish Ambassador warned James that those Virginia people were "a 
school for a seditious Parliament!" 

So, they were summoned duly by writs and assembled at James- 
town, twenty-two representatives from eleven Burroughs, on July 30, 
1619, one or two more than a score of frontiersmen meeting in a raw. 
crude, frontier village on the edge of a vast wilderness, to legislate about 
the affairs of the fifteen-year old colony. But the principles applied by 
them were those on which liberty for mankind has been founded. 

The eleven Burroughs were, James City; Charles City; the City of 
Henricus; Martin Brandon; Martin's Hundred; Lawne's Plantation; 
Ward's Plantation; Argall's Gift; Fleuerdieu Hundred, Smith's Hun- 
dred, and Kecoughtan. Smith's Hundred named after the treasurer. 
Sir Thomas Smith, soon afterwards became "Southampton Hundred;" 
and Kecoughtan became Hampton, both names referring to Shakespeare's 
friend. 

The functions of the new General Assembly were legislative, and to 
some extent, also judicial. It possessed full power of legislation for the 
Colony, and although its acts to become valid required to be approved by 
the General Court of the London Company; on the other hand, in the 
sequel, no enactments of the Company for the Colony acquired validity 
until approved by the General Assembly. 

And here, a word of the Royal Governor, of whom too little has 
been made in our histories. 



300th Anniversary First Laiv-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 21 

Virginia's real progress as a State may be said to have begun with 
Yeardley's administration. Before Yeardley's time there was but one plow 
in Virginia. Before Yeardley's time tlie Colony was subject to the despotic 
government of the Governor appointed in England, as all colonies of all 
countries had been from time immemorial. Sir George Yeardley was several 
times Governor of Virginia, and between his first term in 1616, when he be- 
came the acting governor, and his death in 1627, Virginia grew under his 
zealous fostering care from a straggling and struggling colony, subject to 
martial law, and barely able to maintain itself on the edge of the perilous 
waterways, to a thriving colony with a steadily extending frontier and 
increasing population; with agriculture developing and commerce begin- 
ning; with a university projected and a General Assembly established and 
working on principles which not only laid deep the foundations for 
liberty in America; but was influencing strongly the progress of liberty 
in the mother country. 

If under the high patronage of men like Southampton and Caven- 
dish and the provident and unflagging zeal of Sir Thomas Smith, Edwyn 
Sandys, and Nicholas Ferrar, Virginia expanded from that precarious 
existence between the sea and the forest to a land that had begun to flow 
with milk and honey, let us not forget that earnest, zealous, liberal- 
minded Governor who, sprung from a merchant's family, gave his life 
to building up Virginia on the permanent foundations of self-government. 

The Assembly, called together by drumrbeats an hour after sun- 
rise, was held in the little wooden church, a fitting place for so pious 
a labor, the Royal Governor and the Council sitting in the choir, the 
Governor in a green velvet chair, and the Burgesses in the pews; and, 
of course, the session was opened with prayers. It is a procedure 
which lasted on through the years. And may it ever continue! In those 
days, indeed, attendance on prayers was obligatory and absence was pun- 
ishable with a fine of a shilling, while absence from duty all day was 
punishable with a fine of half a crown. Thus started, under the invoca- 
tion of the protection of God, we know with what affairs they were oc- 
cupied. The credentials verified; the House duly organized and the ad- 
dress delivered, they proceeded to business. Questions of the internal and 
external policy of the Colony were before them and were dealt with 
boldly. Happily, amid the well-nigh general negligence of our people 
touching the preservation of records, there were shining exceptions, and we 
have in the collection of "Hening's Statutes at Large," and of some few 
other pious collectors, records of the matters dealt with in this and suc- 
ceeding assemblies. 

All were in full dress, starched cuffs and silk or velvet coats; gold 
braid, etc. In fact, so highly was this parade and pomp esteemed that 
only two years later a statute was passed making the wearing of gold-braid 
unlawful by any save the Governor, Council, and other high officials. 
The Burgesses sat with hats on, a token of high privilege, as continues 
dovm to today in the British House of Commons, though the practice is 
falling somewhat into desuetude. 

Among the rights which the Virginians esteemed, and justly, the 
most precious was the right of exemption from all taxation save as it 



22 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

might be levied by their representatives, tliat is, by themselves. This was 
a power greater than the crown, greater than the sword. The crown and 
the sword were held in check by it and this they cherished and fought for 
down to its smallest fraction; for it underlay all the rest of their liber- 
ties. It had been wrested from the Crown in England and had become 
an established right of the English people as far back as the time of Ed- 
ward I. And the Virginia charter had conceded it among the rights of 
freeborn Englishmen to the Colony. And now the Virginians had their 
"Parliament" in their General Assembly, and among their earliest meas- 
ures was their assertion of this great right. 

As early as 1623 the General Assembly enacted that "The Governor 
shall not lay any taxes or ympositions upon the Colony, their lands or 
commodities, other way than by the authority of the General Assembly to 
be leveyed and employed as the said Assembly shall appoynt." 

A little later (in 1631) they re-enacted this law, adding now the 
Council in the prohibition. For the Council, though Virginians, were ap- 
pointed by the crown and represented a privileged class, while the Bur- 
gesses represented the people of Virginia. And again and again they re- 
asserted this right to be the sole power authorized to "lay any taxes or 
ympositions." We find the assertion of this right re-enacted in 1632; in 
1642; in 1651, when they provided against Cromwell's Commissioners 
"that Virginia shall be free from all taxes, customs, and ympositions 
whatsoever and none to be imposed on them without consent of the Gen- 
eral Assembly." 

And so, on down through the years, the successors of these free 
Burgesses asserted and defended their liberties against Governors, and 
Kings, and Parliaments. Against Governor Berkeley (in 1666) as against 
King George (in 1765) they stoutly withstood all aggression, and for 
their own liberties and those of their descendants, established the inesti- 
mable principle that, "The General Assembly of this Colony have the sole 
right and power to lay taxes and ympositions upon the inhabitants of 
this Colony; and that every attempt to vest such power in any person or 
persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid has a mani- 
fest tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom." This 
was a part of the famous "Resolves" offered and voted in the then capi- 
tal of Virginia, Williamsburg, when King George III, and his Parlia- 
ments, little recking of the Virginia spirit, attempted to levy a stamp tax 
on the people of the Colonies without the consent of the people of the 
Colonies. 

And here it should be said that possibly the greatest contribution 
which our race has contributed to the world is the right of self-govern- 
ment through representatives of the people. All other forms of govern- 
ment, including absolute Democracy, had been tried and had failed; this 
only, the right to be governed by their representatives, chosen by them- 
selves and answerable to them, had never been fully tried till our fore- 
fathers established it. So long as this endures, with its kindred rights, 
such as trial by a jury of the vicinage; freedom of speech and of the 
press; so long liberty is safe. It may in times of stress be shaken; but 
it cannot be destroyed. 



300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 23 

Our British cousins could not understand and, indeed, their his- 
torians are generally still unable to understand why in the pre-revolution- 
ary commotions the American people broke out into rebellion against 
the imposition of so small a tax as the stamp tax. *The principles on 
which our fathers stood in the Revolution were those which their fa- 
thers stood for in the very inception of self-government speaking through 
this Virginia House of Commons, whose very name is suggestive of the bor- 
ough or fortress of Defense of Rights. 

Hutchinson, the historian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, states 
how a House of Burgesses had "broken out" in Virginia, in 1619, as if, 
Fiske says, "there were an incurable virus of liberty in the English blood."f 

In arguing that the attempt of James I to suppress later the Vir- 
ginia charter really resulted in making the Virginians more independent, 
Fiske adds, that however honest, disinterested and broadminded South- 
ampton, Sandys and Ferrar may have been, they were too distant to govern 
such a colony as Virginia, and holds that "the boon of self-government 
was so congenial to the temper of the Virginians, that they would in any 
event have contrived to obtain it somehow sooner or later." 

In the same connection he shows inferentially, but clearly, how the 
Massachusetts Bay Colony was led by the success of the Virginia Colony, 
to set up a "Second American House of Representatives in 1634," though 
the people of that Colony were well aware that no provision for any- 
thing of the sort had been made in that charter. Thus clearly was the 
influence of the Virginia Colony stamped on the progress of the New Eng- 
land one in that early time. 

From the first, however feeble the Colony and apparently small and 
insignificant the i^ssembly, it contained in itself the element of life that, 
germinated, was to fill the earth with its fruits. It discussed and legis- 
lated on questions which, apparently local and trivial, underlay the pro- 
gress of mankind. It enacted laws; prescribed means for enforcing them; 
tried causes in which the Commonwealth was corncemed, such as crimes. 
It asserted immediately its right to decide as to the qualifications of its 
members. As for example, when on Captain John Martin's refusal to 
relinquish his privilege of exemption from obeying orders of the Colony 
save in times of war, the representatives of his plantation were excluded 
from sitting in the Assembly. (Neill's Virginia Co. 140.) And in due 
time Captain Martin's privilege was abandoned, as were all similar privi- 
leges. 

It is interesting to find in their early records provision made to 
grant the franchise of citizenship to certain Poles who had been brought 
over as artisans to work in the manufacture of glass or silk. 

All the questions of colonial life were dealt with in the early sessions 
of our House of Burgesses. And it is curious how modern legislation here 
in Virginia and elsewhere seems to have found of late the old trail. 

*I heard a lady of historic title say at the American Ambassador's table in Lon- 
don, durnig this war, that she could never forgive Sir George Otto Trevelyan for tak- 
ing the American side in his history of the American Revolution. He has, in that ad 
mirable work, shown how the Americans in the American Revolution fought the battle of 
the Enghsh people as well as their own, and has argued that it was not the English 
people who were against them; but the British Crown and the subservient House of 
Commons. 

t[Hening's States at Large, Vol. I. p. 194; Fiske's Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Vol. 
I. p. 249.] 



24 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

From steps towards the establishment of a far-reaching educational 
institution the laws extended to the prevention of forestalling, or "prof- 
iteering," as we say. 

But they also went, like our modem legislatures, into other mat- 
ters more private and personal. They provided stringently against, if not 
the use, at least the abuse of liquor, prescribing definite penalties; from 
private admonition by the minister, on to public rebukes; imprisonment 
in irons and, finally, severe "punishment at the discretion of the Gover- 
nor and Council." I wonder if our modern Burgesses have improved on 
this legislation? 

But as they were entering on the way of moral reformation they did 
not flinch from pressing their protection of the public interest further. 
It was therefore provided early in the history of the Colony that, "Every 
minister should give notice in his church that what man or woman so- 
ever should use any word or speech tending to contract of marriage to two 
several persons at one time, as might entangle or breed scruples in their 
consciences, should for such their offense undergo corporal correction, or 
be punished by fine or otherwise according to the quality of the person 
so offending." Cooke, as I recall it, cites an instance of a violation of the 
law with its due reward. It is possibly one of the evidences of the pro- 
gress of the spirit of, shall we say, liberty, that later on, some of the old 
laws appear to have had a tendency to fall into abeyance. I shudder to 
think what would have been the result in the capital of the Old Domin- 
ion at a later day had it not been so. 

But as the parson was selected as one of the moral instruments to 
call with authority men from the error of their ways, he was on the one 
hand protected by a provision which enacted that "No man shall dis- 
parage a minister whereby the minds of his parishioners may be alienat- 
ed from him and his ministerie prove less effectual, upon payne of severe 
censures of the Governor and Council." (Hening, Vol. I. 156.) On the 
other hand, there was a sort of counter-balancing provision regarding the 
clergy, which might to evil minds bear an inflexence of practical applica- 
tion. It runs: "Ministers shall not give themselves to excess in drinking 
and ryott, spending their time idlie by day or night, playing at dice, cards, 
or any other unlawful game; but at all times convenient they shall hear 
or read somewhat of the Holy Scriptures or shall occupy themselves with 
some other honest studies or exercise, always doing the things which shall 
appertayne to honestie and endeavor to profit the church of God; having 
always in mind that they ought to excel all others in puritie of life, should 
be examples to the people to live well and Christian like." (Hening's 
Statutes at Large, Vol. I, 158, 183.) I am glad that they got one 
in on the clergy, with their power of public admonition, those pious Bur- 
gesses. 

Also they were occupied in questions of how to increase revenues, 
the perennial question, whether we figure it in thousands as they did or 
in billions as we do now. 

Besides these, there were the questions of defense against foes by 
land and by sea; for they lived in daily and hourly imminent peril from 
dangers both from the sea and from the land. And only three years 
















i -■■'/'/ 
t(l .^hiPt-ff^ 


J- " 






'K'/V 









Fac-Simile of First Page of Journal of House of Burgesses. 

By Courtesy of the United States History Co. From 

"Avery's History of the United States 

and Its People." 




300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 25 

afterwards this latter peril was to oversweep the Colony and by a stroke 
well-nigh destroy it root and branch, cutting off aome of these very repre- 
sentatives. With questions also, were they occupied, of privilege and right 
under their charters, of the preservation and even the extension of their 
liberties; with other kindred questions. 

It was doubtless all apparently trivial and insignificant enough in the 
eyes of Europe; for what could these widely scattered settlements amid 
the forests and swamps of Virginia amount to? Who cared anything 
about Sir George Yeardley and the Virginia Assembly? Even the Royal 
Governor was accorded scarcely a half dozen lines in our former his- 
tories and the assembly was mainly disposed of in a paragraph. Even 
more than a hundred years later the British Solicitor General had the 
insolence to say to the commissary of William and Mary College, who 
was arguing in favor of aiding Virginia educationally and morally, "Damn 
their souls! Raise tobacco." It expressed the whole attitude of the old 
country to the new. And yet, from this grain of seed hidden in the Vir- 
ginia soil has sprung through the years a plant so great that the peoples 
lodge under its branches and the nations find shelter in its shade. 

Let us have the contemporary account of the Assembly as it was re- 
ported to England.* 

"The most convenient place we could find to sett in, was the Quire 
of the Church, where Sir George Yeardley, the Governor, being set down 
in his accustomed place, those of the Counsel of Estate sate nexte to him 
on both handes, except only the Secretary, then appointed speaker who 
sate right before him; John Twine, Clerk of the General Assembly, 
being placed next the speaker, and Thomas Pierse, the Sargeant, stand- 
ing at the barre to be ready for any service the Assembly shoulde com- 
mand him. But foreasmuch as men's affaires do little prosper where 
God's service is neglected, all the Burgesses tooke their places in the Quire 
till a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister, that it would please 
God to guide and sanctify all our proceedings to His Glory, and the good 
of this plantation. Prayer being ended, to the intent that as we had be- 
gun at God Almighty, so we might proceed with as ful and due respect 
towards the Lieutenant, our most gracious and dread Soverigne, all the 
Burgesses were entreated to retyre themselves into the body of the church, 
which being done, before they were freely admitted, they were called to 
order and by name, and so every man (none staggering at it), took the 
oathe of supremacy and then entered the Assembly." 

You know what this oath of supremacy was : It was a sort of spiritual 
Monroe Doctrine for the English and American people. 

And now let us call the roll, "by name," as was done on that oc- 
casion three hundred years ago, with Sir George Yeardley, the Governor, 
in his green velvet chair in the "quire," "in his accustomed place," "with the 
Counsel of Estate nexte him on both handes, except only the Secretary, 
John Pory, then appointed speaker, who sate right before him; John 
Twine, Clerk of the General Assembly next the speaker and Thomas 
Pierse, the Sargeant, standing at the barre ready for any service the As- 
sembly shoulde command him." 

*(Quoted from Wm. Wirt Henry's Paper on the first Legislative Assembly in American 
Magazine of American History Association. 15 94.) 



26 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

The "Counsel of Estate" seated on either hand of the Governor were 
all gentlemen and mostly scholars. They were Captain Francis West, 
son of Sir Thomas West, Second Lord De La Warr, and had held high 
office in the Colony including the command at the falls of James river; 
Captain Nathaniel Powell, who had accompanied Newport in his ex- 
ploration of the Virginia waters. He and his wife perished March 22, 
1620, in the great Indian massacre. John Rolph came to Virginia with 
Governor Gates and he needs no introduction to this Assembly in which 
are so many of his descendants. The Rev. William Wickham, one of 
the pious clergy, whose lives and teaching honored our early history. 
Captain Samuel Maycock, scholar and gentleman, who, like Captain 
Powell, perished later in the Indian massacre. John Pory, the secretary, 
now holding the new dignity of speaker. 

And now we come to the Burgesses, representatives of those Boroughs 
or Burghs of Defense situated along the margins of the Virginia rivers; 
but constituting the first fortress of the rights of all Americans from that 
time forward. 

Captain William Powell and Ensign Spence sat for James City. 
Samuel Sharp and Samuel Jordon, of "Jordon's Journey," sat for Charles 
City. It was the latter's widow. Mistress Cicely Jordon, who in 1623 
used with the Rev. Greville Pooley and Mr. William Farrar, two several 
persons, "such words or speech tending to a contract of marriage at one 
time as might entangle or breed scniples in their consciences," that the 
matter was brought before the Council and, having been found too knotty 
for them, was actually referred to the Council in London. 

Thomas Dawse and John Palentine sat for the City of Henricus. 
where the University was projected. Captain William Tucker and Wil- 
liam Capp represented Kecoughtan. Captain Thomas Graves and Wal- 
<^ V ^• "-^erT^eney sat for Smith's Hundred. Later the former sat for Accomack. 
The latter died three days after he had taken his seat in this first House 
of Burgesses. 

John Boys and John Jackson sat for Martin's Hundred. Captain 
Thomas Pawlett and Mr. Gourgainy sat for Argall's Guifte. Ensign 
Rossingham and Mr. Jefferson represented Fleuerdieu Hundred. Captain 
Christopher Lawne and Ensign Washer represented Lawne's Plantation, 
afterwards the Isle of Wight. Captain Warde and Lieutenant Gibbes sat 
for Warde's Plantation. Thomas Davis and Robert Stacy represented 
Martin's Plantation, but later were unseated on Captain Martin's re- 
fusal to surrender his privilege of exemption from the Virginia laws save 
in time of war. 

Such is the roll of the first membership of this historic Assembly, whose 
acts formed a link in the golden, unbroken chain of Virginia's self- 
government and struggle for liberty. They were nearly all men of edu- 
cation, nearly all gentlemen, and all were men of action. Their names 
may not for the most part still survive in Virginia; but if their names 
have passed away, their work still survives to bless their descendants and 
the descendants of their successors throughout this broad land. 

So great was the effect of this work of the Virginians in the mother 
country that the fool pedant. King James, already scared into believing 
that the Colony was "a school of sedition," attempted under the instiga- 



300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 27 

tion of Spain to suppress the charters of the Virginia Company and, 
indeed, succeeded for a time; but they were wrung again from his ill- 
fated successor and, as ever in such struggles, were more highly prized 
than before. Nothing in all our history is more notable than the courage 
and tenacity with which the responsible heads of the Virginia Company, 
braving the tyrannous decision of the Crown labored night and day and 
finally saved the records on which depended the continuity, if not the 
existence, of the Colony's liberties. 

A little more than a year from the assembling of this first legislature 
another colony reached Virginia and established a permanent .settle- 
ment. Headed for these shores it was driven by the winds and by fate 
to the shores of Northern Virginia, and, settled on that "stern and rock- 
bound coast," it developed along lines rather resembling pure Democracy, 
with a strong theocratic tinge. If much more has been made of this lat- 
ter colony than of that which preceded it and had already rooted repre- 
sentative government in America; it is our own fault. Why should we 
complain of them for magnifying themselves. The facts are here at 
hand. Let us apply ourselves to setting them before the world, rather 
than to railing against those who, more industrious than ourselves, relate 
only what they know and know little of that which we are celebrating. 

It might prove an interesting study for those who have time to give 
to it to ascertain how far the Puritan Fathers were influenced in their 
decisions by the establishment in the Old Dominion of this representative 
Legislative Assembly, which we celebrate today. 

That it exercised an influence on these seekers after freedom can- 
not be doubted. We have already seen how the Massachusetts Bay Colony 
some years later set up a Legislative Assembly, evidently copying the 
Virginia General Assembly. However, in their religious nonconforming 
fervor they may have given the lead in all discussion and in all records 
to this phase of religious freedom, their knowledge of Virginia was what 
headed the Mayflower and the Anne for these shores and their action in 
drawing up their Pact on the Mayflower places the effect of this As- 
sembly beyond the range of conjecture. 

In this same year, 1619, according to the records, two other events 
took place which with their consequences in the sequel had an effect on 
the progress of Virgina's political and economic development. The first 
was the importation of a cargo of "certaine chaste widows and maids" as 
wives for the Virginians. The other was the bringing to Virginia of 
the first cargo of African slaves by Argall's Privateer, "The Treasurer," 
which captured them from a Spanish vessel trading to the West Indies. 

From the inception of Legislative Assemblies in the Colony the con- 
test was on between the settlers of the new country and the government 
of the old. It could not be otherwise; for with the vast distance that 
stretched between them, the new conditions in the new land, demanding 
ever instant, immediate care and the fixed conditions in the mother coun- 
try set in established tradition, there could neither remain that clearness 
of apprehension of the colonists' needs; that community of interest be- 
tween them, nor that smilarity of sentiment which are the breath of life 
of all union between peoples. 



28 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

It was a high assertion of privilege when John Sharpless, the clerk 
of the Assembly, was stood in the pillory and had his ear dipt by order 
of the House of Burgesses for disobeying their order not to surrender the 
records to King James' Commissioners. A little later, Governor Har- 
vey was thrust out by them, an act of substantial magnitude in the his- 
tory of our people's fight for self-government. He was reinstated; when 
the Virginians had shown the temper of their spirit. 

The government of the mother country soon had too much to do to at- 
tend to her own Legislative Assembly to permit her to continue her policy 
of control over the legislatures of her Colonies. The fight for the liber- 
ties of the Virginians had its repercussion in the old country, and the 
resolute, democratic, theocratic tendencies of the Puritans in New Eng- 
land had their influence in Old England. So, after a little time, came 
revolution in England. The King was brought to judgment; the Common- 
wealth was set up and in the room of the government of the King was 
set up that of the Lord Protector based on the fusion of the Democratic and 
theocratic ideas. This lasted no long time, though Cromwell, greatest 
of British rulers, raised England's prestige abroad immeasurably. 

Virginia, her own legislative power now established, defied the new 
government which was fane to send commissioners and make a treaty with 
her almost, if not quite, as with an independent State, and later, on 
the restoration of the House of Stuart, Virginia was added as a new pow- 
er to King Charles' realm, realizing what Edmund Spenser had in his 
imagination forecast when he dedicated his "Faery Queen" to Elizabeth, 
Queen of England, France, Ireland and Virginia. 

In the reaction that succeeded the upheaval in England, the Old 
Dominion was sufficiently involved and her liberties neglected or invaded 
to cause her people under the leadership of her young Tribune, Nat 
Bacon, to assert her liberties and to fling her into revolution. Bacon, the 
rebel, died, and so, for a time, perished her cause, her revolution being 
stamped out, as revolutions mainly are, in blood. But, mark! that this 
was a revolution of the people based on the people's rights against the 
government supported by the privileged class. And Virginia never for- 
got that her people had fought for their inalienable rights. Twelve years 
later came England's revolution and the last King of the House of Stuart 
was driven from the throne. 

His two daughters succeeded him and the House of Hanover came 
in, with increased guaranties of libei"ty to the British people in which 
Virginia participated. The British Bill of Rights bore in every para- 
graph the mark of the influence of the Virginia struggle for the right 
of self-government. 

I give these facts not because they are not known to all of you, but 
because the very tracing of them in chronological sequence shows their 
relation, and expresses in even their bare outline how the progress of 
liberty in the Old Dominion, ever impeded as it was, influenced and bore 
upon the progress of liberty in the old world. And so we come on down 
to the next great step that Virgina made in the age-long struggle for the 
rights of man, the Revolution of 1776. 

This is the date that we set, and we fix even a day as that of our 



300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 29 

birth as a nation. But think not that this was its true birthday. It was 
rather only its christening. Through the years the new people were com- 
ing to its birth. It is not necessary in this Assembly to recount the stages 
of its growth till it was heralded to those who watched. You know the 
story of the long contest, of the fight for freedom, for which the Virginia 
House of Burgesses, lineal successor of that Assembly which sat at James- 
town in the year 1619, ever stood; the protest, they termed them in the 
suave language of the time. But they had gradually lost their pre- 
catory tone and, intermigled with the terms of obsequious respect, was a 
new note that swelled from impatience to anger and finally rang with 
what was not far from defiance. 

The story of the great conventions; of the revolutions; of the Vir- 
ginia Bill of Rights down to the Declaration of Independence, is all only 
a part of one continuous, unbroken whole — of one protracted contest for 
liberty, in which the leaders were the descendants or successors of these 
Virginia Burgesses who in that early day stamped on the first Anglo- 
Saxon life of the American Continent the principle of self-government, 
in a representative form. These leaders down to those in the last great 
act in the drama which proclaimed liberty not only for Virginia or for 
Massachusetts, but for all the thirteen colonies of Great Britian on the 
continent and incidentally for all men, for the most part were in their time 
Virginia Burgesses. Shall I recount them? George Washington, Patrick 
Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, the Lees, Harrisons, Randolphs 
and others of the same class. You know the effect of this action on the 
world. Liberty took a step forward greater than had ever been made 
before and in time the whole world was falling in — ^haltingly enough — 
yet perceptibly to march in cadence with the same music. 

It will cast a light on the greatness of this step to reflect that at this 
time Catherine II ruled in Russia; Frederick the Great in Prussia; George 
the Third in Great Britain; and the Hapsburgs in Austria, and the 
Italian States, and Louis XVI in France. The whole world was in the 
grip of an iron tyranny, till these men and their fellows in other colonies 
broke it loose. 

The American Revolution blazed the way and cleared the path for 
freedom. France followed suit and with some excesses sent the impulse 
of liberty across Europe and South America in a way which not even Na- 
poleon nor the reaction which succeeded to his regime could wholly sup- 
press. Hardly a country in Europe but felt the thrill of liberty that 
pulsed through men's quickened veins and demanded constitutions at the 
hands of their tyrants, great and small. And, although Austria under 
Metternick's guidance was able for a while to restore the regime of dynastic 
autocracy and suppress freedom, the seed planted remained and recent 
events have shown beyond need of comment that that seed, however cov- 
ered, contained the elements of life. 

The Holy Alliance having suppressed liberty on the Continent of Eu- 
rope, as was believed for good, cast its eyes across the seas with the in- 
tent to restore to the Spanish Crown its revolted colonies, which with 
the moral support of the United States had obtained their independence, 
but here the United States stepped in and under the lead of a Virginian 



30 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 



laid down the doctrine that no European power shall impose on any coun- 
try in America a different form of government without the latter' s consent, 
a bar which for a hundred years has sufficed to maintain liberty on the 
Western Hemisphere. 

And so we come to the last step in the march of liberty, which shows 
the sequence during these three hundred years from this first Legislative 
Assembly in the Old Dominion in the year 1619. No wonder that the 
British and Spanish believers in the divine right of kings considered the 
Virgnia Company and Assembly "a school of sedition." 

For some years this march of liberty with its steady movement across 
the world has disturbed the dream of the exponents of the divine right 
of kings, in the Imperial Houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg, and 
also of their subservient slaves and obsequious pretorian guards, and 
to it they had planned deliberately to oppose the tramp, tramp of 
their imperial armies. They recognized clearly that the world, their world, 
could not contain these two opposing forces in equilbrium, and they set 
themselves — they and their obedient servitors — to destroy that which 
threatened the permanency of their autocratic system. They began far 
back; planned carefully; laid their foundations deep and broad; 
developed their science, their commerce, their military; perfected their 
organization, military and civil — ^perfected it beyond anything ever dreamed 
of, and prepared for Armageddon in absolute assurance of success. While 
the rest of the world thought and dreamed of peace and liberty and work- 
ed earnestly therefor, the exponent of imperial power planned and pre- 
pared and worked for war continuously, coldly, deliberately, and at the 
auspicious moment, as they deemed it, they sprang at the throat of the 
world. Tyranny, the slavement of man, imperial enmity to liberty, has 
many crimes to its account, but this is the greatest in history. 

Much has been written of the crimes committed in this war, and they 
have been such as to shock the conscience of mankind, but the one su- 
preme and all-comprehending crime was the deliberate, cold-blooded, 
carefully planned attempt on the part of Germany to overthrow the liberty 
of the world and subject it to German imperialism. All the other; all 
the rest — scornful contempt of solemn treaties; shooting of hostages; Lusi- 
tania and hospital ship sinkings; bombing of unfortified towns; deporta- 
tion of civic populations; brutality to women and children; all pale into 
insignificance beside, and are merely incidental to, the supreme crime of 
deliberately, cold-bloodedly, plotting against a world free and at peace; 
its subjugation to German lust of conquest. It was charged against the 
Indians that decimated the colony of Virginia in 1620 that they employed 
the guise of friendship to throw the colonists off their guard that they 
might strike them the more suddenly and certainly. They were savages 
and their lands had been ravished from them. But what did those re- 
sponsible for Germany do? They had plotted and planned everything. 
Organization, military and civic, had been raised to the Nth power. So 
far as science could assure and mathematics could calculate, the result 
was certain. It was all planned to move like clock-work. Only one fac- 
tor in the vast problem they overlooked; the forces latent in free institu- 
tions; the incalculable power of the spirit of liberty. But for this they 



300th Anniversary First Law^Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 3 1 

would have won; with this arrayed against them they were fated to lose. 
What brought us, against all our traditions, the unbroken habitude of our 
entire history, to enter this war? Just this, that the liberty of mankind 
was imperilled, ours included. This changed the entire situation. What 
secured the victory? Just this — the power that the spirit of freedom 
imports, whether it be in the breasts of a few backwoodsmen settled 
along the banks of the Virginia rivers, like our Burgesses in this first 
Assembly at Jamestown, or in their descendants and successors, ranging 
from the President of the United States, the first man in all the world 
today, down to the simplest private in the ranks of the armies of free- 
dom or the humblest worker in our factories or our fields. We were rich, 
we were great, we were strong in numbers and resources, but it was not our 
wealth nor our resources nor our numbers that won in this world strug- 
gle. We might have been all these, we might have been even richer and 
mightier and have lost. It was the incalculable spirit of freedom; the 
soul of Liberty that animated the great American Democracy that Presi- 
dent Wilson spoke to and in whose name he spoke to the spirit of liberty 
that lived, however suppressed, among the democracies of the world. It 
was this that won, as against all defeats and setbacks it has won since 
the day when our first Virginia General Assembly met in Jamestown and 
devoted their energies to safe-guarding the liberties set forth in their char- 
ters; and as it will win in the years to come against all enemies, all the 
forms of reaction the world over. 

If any think that without those who led in these early years the fight 
for their chartered rights, we should have had the champions who wrested 
freedom from the transplanted German potentates who ruled over Eng- 
land; or that without those who in Virginia led in our great struggle 
against England we should have won in this war, the thought is vain. 
It was that which I venture to term the Virginia spirit that won. In those 
years this spirit, this incurable, unappeasable thirst for liberty, suffi- 
ciently guided and inspired by the Virginians, to justify our terming it 
"the Virginia Spirit" had spread throughout America, had indeed flown 
like the seeds of the plant creation across the lands and taken root among 
the peoples of the world. 

It was to this spirit that in the crucial contest between the two sys- 
tems for their very life, a son of Virginia appealed when in the winter 
of 1916-17 he spoke to the democracy of the world to arise and face the 
peril that threatened its existence the world over. 

I say he was a son of Virginia, not simply because he was born on 
Virginia soil, but because wherever he might have first seen the light, the 
spirit in which he spoke is that which he got from Virginia, from her great 
apostles of liberty. He got his democracy from those apostles and he 
learned it as a science at her University at the feet of that Gamaliel of 
the law who in his time and mine taught the young men of the South the 
principles of jurisprudence and their relation to liberty. 

It has become in some sort the fashion to denounce the President. 
Hardly anything that he does escapes acrid criticism. 1 say that he 
saved the world. He may not have done it in a way that all desired, but 
he saved it, as much as George Washington saved the cause of liberty in 



32 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 

the first decade of this nation; as Jefferson saved democracy in those dec- 
ades that followed; Woodrow Wilson saved democracy, not only in Eu- 
rope, but in America. Others might have done it in his place, but he was 
there and his was the work. Speaking in the name of that Virginia, 
which has become the United States of America, he called forth from the 
peoples of the world that latent, but supreme force, which our fathers re- 
ceived from their fathers and transmitted throughout the world to all the 
sons of liberty of whatever people or clime; and in its majestic exercise 
it has saved the world. 

And now he has returned from his arduous labors at the peace table 
Bind brought you peace, or at least the promise of peace, and the only 
promise of durable peace discernible in all the wide horizon of this dis- 
tracted world. And what do we hear? Only cavilling and criticism; 
only objection and denunciation and threats and efforts to force the re- 
jection of the treaty of peace so laboriously and patriotically negotiated. 
No one claims that the treaty and the league of nations on which it is based 
are perfect. But they are the one ark of safety of the world. If it be 
rdjected the consequence will be the flinging of Europe into immediate 
chaos and America will follow or be forced to become a great military 
power with all the burdens of great armanent like those which caused this 
vast war and peace and democracy and liberty will in no long time be 
swept away and it will all have to be fought over again. That the fight 
will be won there is no question. The forces of free institutions will 
win in the long run. But why impose on posterity the curse of an- 
other such struggle as this in which we have just won at so great a sacrifice ? 
Why, in face of the terrible experience through which the world has just 
passed, reject the one hope of escape offered for our children and oui 
children's children? To do so will be to insult not merely those who have 
brought us the peace treaty with its sanction of the league of nations; but 
all the patriots and martyrs who have through the years given their lives 
in the holiest of all causes — the struggle for liberty. 

It is because of this mighty work of the spirit of liberty and of its 
direct connection with it that I have come to celebrate with you here today 
the three hundredth annversary of that first Virginia House of Burgesses. 



u 




BANCROFT'S ACCOUNT OF FIRST LAW- 
MAKING BODY IN AMERICA 

Virginia, for twelve years after its settlement, languished under the 
government of Sir Thomas Smith, Treasurer of the Virginia Company in 
England. The Colony was ruled during that period by laws written in 
blood; and its history shows how the narrow selfishness of despotic power 
could counteract the best efforts of benevolence. The colonists suffered an 
extremity of distress too horrible to be described. 

In April, 1619, Sir George Yeardley arrived. Of the emigrants who 
had been sent over at great cost, not one in twenty then remained alive. 

"In James Citty were 
only those houses that Sir 
Thomas Gates built in the 
tyme of his government, 
with one wherein the 
Governor all way es dwelt, 
and a church, built 
wholly at the charge of 
the inhabitants of that 
citye, of timber, being 
fifty foote in length and 
twenty foot in breadth." 
At Henrico, now Rich- 
mond, therg were no more 
than "three old houses, a 
poor ruinated Church, 
with some few poore 
buildings in the Islande." "For ministers to instruct the people, he founde 
only three authorized, two others who never received their orders." "The 
natives he founde uppon doubtfull termes;" so that 
when the twelve years of Sir Thomas Smith's gov- 
ernment expired, Virginia, according to the "judge- 
ments" of those who were then members of the 
Colony, was "in a poore estate." 

From the moment of Yeardley's arrival dates 
the real life of Virginia. He brought with him 
"Commissions and instructions from the Company 
for the better establishinge of a Commonwealth 
heere." He made proclamation, "that those cruell 
lawes by which we" (I use the words of the 
Ancient Planters themselves) "had soe longe been 
governed, were now abrogated, and that we were Reverse of Seal of Virginia 
to be governed by those free lawes which his Majes- '•^''^ 

ties subjectes live under in Englande." Nor were states"Hilu)ry^ Co^ From 
these considerations made dependent on the good "^^^5^^^^ suiter and Stl^^ 
will of administrative officers. People." 




JAMESTOWN CHURCH 

By courtesy of the United States History Co. From 
"Avery's History of the United States and Its People." 




34 300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 




Obverse of Seal of Virginia 
1619 

By courtesy of the United 

States History Co. From 

"Avery's History of the 

United States and Its 

People." 



"And that they might have a hande in the governinge of themselves," 
such are the words of the Planters, "Yt was graunted that a generall 
Assemblie shoulde be helde yearly once, whereat were to be present the 
Gov'' and Counsell w*'^ two Burgesses from each Plantation, freely to be 
elected by the inhabitants thereof, this Assemblie to have power to make 
and ordaine whatsoever lawes and orders should be them be thought good 
and profitable for our subsistance." 

In conformity with these instructions, Sir George Yeardley "sente his 
summons all over the country, as well to invite those 
of the Counsell of Estate that were absente, as also 
for the election of the Burgesses;" and on Friday, 
the 30th day of July, 1619, the first elective legis- 
lative body of this continent assembled at James 
City. 

In the relation of Master John Rolfe, inserted 
by Captain John Smith in his History of Virginia, 
there is this meagre notice of the Assembly: "The 
25 of June came in the Triall with Come and Cat- 
tell in all safety, which tooke from vs cleerely all 
feare of famine; then our gouernor and councell 
caused Burgesses to be chosen in all places, and 
met at a generall Assembly, where all matters were 
debated thought expedient for the good of the Col- 
ony." 

This account did not attract the attention of 
Beverley, the early historian of Virginia, who denies that there was any 
Assembly held there before May, 1620. 

The careful Stith, whose work is not to be corrected without a 
hearty recognition of his superior diligence and exemplary fidelity, gives 
an account of this first legislative body, though he errs a little in 
the date by an inference from Rolfe's narrative, which the words do not 
warrant. 

The prosperity of Virginia begins with the day when it received, as 
"a commonwealth," the freedom to make laws for itself. In a solemn ad- 
dress to King James, which was made during the government of Sir 
Francis Wyatt, and bears the signature of the Governor, Council, and 
apparently every member of the Assembly, a contrast is drawn between 
the former "miserable bondage," and "this just and gentle authoritye 
which hath cherished us of late by more worthy magistrates. And we, 
our wives and poor children shall ever pray to God, as our bounden duty 
is, to give you in this worlde all increase of happines, and to crowne you 
in the worlde to come w*'^ immortall glorye." 

A desire has long existed to recover the record of the proceedings 
of the Assembly which inaugurated so happy a revolution. Stith was un- 
able to find it; no traces of it were met by Jefferson; and Hening, and 
those who followed Hening, believed it no longer extant. Indeed, it was 
given up as hopelessly lost. 

Having, during a long period of years, instituted a very thorough re- 
search among the papers relating to America in the British State Paper 




300th Anniversary First Law-Making Body On Western Hemisphere. 35 

Office, partly in person and partly with the assistance of able and in- 
telligent men employed in that Department, I have at last been so for- 
tunate as to obtain the "Proceedings of the First Assembly of Virginia." 
The document is in the form of "a reporte" from the Speaker; and is 
more full and circumstantial than any subsequent journal of early legis- 
lation in the Ancient Dominion. 

Many things are noticeable. The Governor and 
Council sat with the Burgesses, and took part in /^^*^^^'^ 
motions and debates. The Secretary of the Colony 
was chosen Speaker, and I am not sure that he was 
a Burgess. The first American Assembly set the 
precedent of beginning legislation with prayer. It is 
evident that Virginia was then as thoroughly a Church xc •-'"'S^^pss' ■^,?> 
of England colony as Connecticut afterwards was a Xj^^p^^iP^ 
Calvinistic one. The inauguration of legislative obverse of Seal <rf Virginia 
power in the Ancient Dominion preceded the existence ■*®''® 

of negro slavery, which we will believe it is destined also to sur- 
vive. The earliest Assembly in the oldest of the original thirteen States, at 
its first session, took measures "towards the erecting of" a "University 
and Colledge." Care was also taken for the education of Indian children. 
Extravagance in dress was not prohibited, but the ministers were to profit 
by a tax on excess in apparel. On the whole, the record of these Pro- 
ceedings will justify the opinion of Sir Edward Sandys, that "they were 
very well and judiciously carried." The different functions of govern- 
ment may have been confounded and the laws were not framed according 
to any speculative theory; but a perpetual interest attaches to the first elec- 
tive body representing the people of Virginia, more than a year before the 
Mayflower, with the Pilgrims, left the harbor of Southampton, and while 
Virginia was still the oldest British Colony on the whole Continent of 
America. 

GEORGE BANCROFT. 

Nevv^ York, October 3, 1856. 



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